Battling meth

Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader

This is a frustrating story about methamphetamine and supply and demand.

Last year, Missouri enacted a law that greatly reduced consumer access to cold pills containing pseudoephedrine, one of the ingredients in meth. Since that time, the number of meth labs in the state has dropped.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a similar law restricting the sale of similar products on a national level. This will help address one of the problems with the Missouri law, that a meth cook could cross the border and go to a state such as Arkansas that did not have such restrictive laws regarding the cold pills. The federal law is stricter than the state law passed last year and should help even more in preventing meth cooks from getting their hands on the toxic ingredients needed to make the drug.

Decreasing the number of meth labs is good for several reasons. It prevents people from getting involved in a highly dangerous endeavor. Meth labs are highly explosive and often extremely hard to clean up. They also can expose innocent bystanders, including children living in the home, to deadly fumes created during the meth-making process.

Unfortunately, for all the good the law does, demand remains for the high that meth delivers, and a steady supply remains on the street. Call it the law of unintended consequences.

The law's success in decreasing the amount of homegrown meth has opened a door in the marketplace for meth from distant super labs, said local law enforcement officials. Because of economies of scale, the large amounts of meth made in Mexico and in western states such as California are cheaper for addicts to buy and use than meth they could cook up themselves. The super lab meth is also a stronger, purer form of the drug that leads to an even faster, stronger, more addictive high than what people experienced before. ...

Therein lies the root of the problem. To further reduce the meth problem in southwest Missouri, we should focus on the demand, not just the supply.

... It takes money and time to turn meth heads around. The war on drugs costs billions. We should be creative in our approach and find a way to channel some of that money into helping those addicted to meth to kick the habit.

A modest investment could have a huge return for our community.

The new laws limiting meth ingredients do a good job of thwarting small-time meth cooks. But without a drop in demand, the cheaper, more powerful meth will continue to ravage our communities and destroy lives.

We've done our best to limit supply, now let's go to work reducing the demand.